iPhone 4S Siri hack adds spoken settings control and battery status

The Siri hacks continue, with the latest mod for the iPhone 4S granting voice control over settings like WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as the ability to summon verbal feedback on things like battery status while your phone is in your pocket or bag. Handiwork of Hamza Sood, this latest tweak allows Siri users to toggle wireless settings with their voice, set screen brightness to different levels, and even send dictated messages using emojis.

Sood tells us that by using MobileSubstrate, a framework that allows third-party developers to access system functions, he's able to add the settings support to Siri without requiring a proxy server. That has benefits in terms of stability and privacy, since you're not relying on a third-party server to be online 24/7 or passing your spoken commands and dictated messages through someone else's systems.

Being able to ask your phone how much battery life is left without taking it out of your pocket is another potentially very useful trick, as is being able to shut off or turn on Bluetooth and WiFi without having to dig through the iOS settings menus. It can even tell you your WiFi signal strength and IP address.

Unfortunately Sood's hack does require a jailbreak to your iPhone 4S, something that's not publicly available at present. Beyond that, though, it's a simple case of copying a few files to the phone, so when the various teams working on a 4S jailbreak finally do strike gold, we can see this mod being very popular.